“the first and worst of all frauds is to cheat one's self.”
percy roden was possessed of that love of horses which, like sentiment, crops up in strange places. he had never been able to indulge this taste beyond the doubtful capacities of the livery-stable. he found, however, that at the hague he could hire a good saddle-horse, which discovery was made with suspicious haste after learning the fact that mrs. vansittart occasionally indulged in the exercise that his soul loved.
mrs. vansittart said that she rode because one has to take exercise, and riding is the laziest method of fulfilling one's obligations in this respect.
“i don't like horsy women,” she said; “and i cannot understand how my sex has been foolish enough to believe that any woman looks her best, or, indeed, anything but her worst, in the saddle.”
there is a period in the lives of most men when they are desirous of extending their knowledge of the surrounding country on horseback, on a bicycle, on foot, or even on their hands and knees, if such journeys might be accomplished in the company of a certain person. percy roden was at this period, and he soon discovered that there are tulip farms in the neighbourhood of the hague. a tulip farm may serve its purpose as well as ever did a ruin or a waterfall in more picturesque countries than holland; for, indeed, during the last weeks in april and the early half of may, these fields of waving yellow, pink, and red are worth traveling many miles to see. as for mrs. vansittart, it may be said of her, as of the rest of her sex under similar circumstances, that it suited her purpose to say that she would like nothing better than to visit the tulip farms.
roden's suggestion included breakfast at the villa des dunes, whither mrs. vansittart drove in her habit, while her saddle-horse was to follow later. dorothy welcomed her readily enough, with, however, a reserve at the back of her grey eyes. a woman is, it appears, ready to forgive much if love may be held out as an excuse, but dorothy did not believe that mrs. vansittart had any love for percy; indeed, she shrewdly suspected that all that part of this woman's life belonged to the past, and would remain there until the end of her existence. there are few things more astonishing to the close observer of human nature than the accuracy and rapidity with which one woman will sum up another.
“you are not in your habit,” said mrs. vansittart, seating herself at the breakfast-table. “you are not to be of the party?”
“no,” answered dorothy. “i have never had the opportunity or the inclination to ride.”
“ah, i know,” laughed the elder woman. “horses are old-fashioned, and only dowagers drive in a barouche to-day. i suppose you ride a bicycle, or would do so in any country but holland, where the roads make that craze a madness. i must be content with my old-fashioned horse. if, in moving with the times, one's movements are apt to be awkward, it is better to be left behind, is it not, mr. roden?”
roden's glance expressed what he did not care to say in the presence of a third person. when a woman, whose every movement is graceful, speaks of awkwardness, she assuredly knows her ground.
mrs. vansittart, moreover, showed clearly enough that she was on the safe side of forty by quite a number of years when it came to settling herself in the saddle and sitting her fresh young horse.
“which way?” she inquired when they reached the canal.
“not that way, at all events,” answered roden, for his companion had turned her horse's head toward the malgamite works.
he spoke with a laugh that was not pleasant to the ears, and a shadow passed through mrs. vansittart's dark eyes. she glanced across the yellow sand hills, where the works were effectually concealed by the rise and fall of the wind-swept land, from whence came no sign of human life, and only at times, when the north wind blew, a faint and not unpleasant odour like the smell of sealing-wax. for all that the world knew of the malgamite workers, they might have been a colony of lepers. “you speak,” said mrs. vansittart, “as if you were a failure instead of a brilliant success. i think”—she paused for a moment, as if the thought were a real one and not a mere conversational convenience, as are the thoughts of most people—“that the cream of social life consists of the cheery failures.”
“i have no faith in my own luck,” answered percy roden, gloomily, whose world was a narrow one, consisting as it did of himself and his bank-book. moreover, most men draw aside readily enough the curtain that should hide the world in which they live, whereas women take their stand before their curtain and talk, and talk—of other things.
mrs. vansittart had never for a moment been mistaken in her estimate of her companion, of—as he considered himself—her lover. she had absolutely nothing in common with him. she was a physically lazy, but a mentally active woman, whose thoughts ran to abstract matters so persistently that they brought her to the verge of abstraction itself.
percy roden, on the other hand, would, with better health, have been an athlete. in his youth he had overtaxed his strength on the football field. when he took up a newspaper now he read the money column first and the sporting items next.
mrs. vansittart glanced at neither of these, and as often as not contented herself with the advertisements of new books, passing idly over the news of the world with a heedless eye. she, at all events, avoided the mistake, common to men and women of a journalistic generation, of allowing themselves to be vastly perturbed over events in far countries, which can in no way affect their lives.
roden, on the other hand, took a certain broad interest in the progress of the world, but only watched the daily procession of events with the discriminating eye of a business man. he kept his eye, in a word, on the main chance, as on a small golden thread woven in the grey tissue of the world's history.
it was easy enough to make him talk of himself and of the malgamite scheme.
“and you must admit that you are a success, you know,” said mrs. vansittart. “i see your quiet grey carts, full of little square boxes, passing up park straat to the railway station in a procession every day.”
“yes,” admitted roden. “we are doing a large business.”
he was willing to allow mrs. vansittart to suppose that he was a rich man, for he was shrewd enough to know that the affections, like all else in this world, are purchasable.
“and there is no reason,” suggested mrs. vansittart, “why you should not go on doing a large business, as you say your method of producing malgamite is an absolute secret.”
“absolute.”
“and the process is preserved in your memory only?” asked the lady, with a little glance towards him which would have awakened the vanity of wiser men than percy roden.
“not in my memory,” he answered. “it is very long and technical, and i have other things to think of. it is in von holzen's head, which is a better one than mine.”
“and suppose herr von holzen should fall down and die, or be murdered, or something dramatic of that sort—what would happen?”
“ah,” answered roden, “we have a written copy of it, written in hebrew, in our small safe at the works, and only von holzen and i have the keys of the safe.”
mrs. vansittart laughed. “it sounds like a romance,” she said. she pulled up, and sat motionless in the saddle for a few moments. “look at that line of sea,” she said, “on the horizon. what a wonderful blue.”
“it is always dark like that with an east wind,” replied roden, practically. “we like to see it dark.”
mrs. vansittart turned and looked at him interrogatively, her mind only half-weaned from the thoughts which he never understood.
“because we know that the smell of malgamite will be blown out to sea,” he explained; and she gave a little nod of comprehension.
“you think of everything,” she said, without enthusiasm.
“no; i only think of you,” he answered, with a little laugh, which indeed was his method of making love.
for fear of mrs. vansittart laughing at him, he laughed at love—a very common form of cowardice. she smiled and said nothing, thus tacitly allowing him, as she had allowed him before, to assume that she was not displeased. she knew that in love he was the incarnation of caution, and would only venture so far as she encouraged him to come. she had him, in a word, thoroughly in hand.
they rode on, talking of other things; and roden, having sped his shaft, seemed relieved in mind, and had plenty to say—about himself. a man's interests are himself, and malgamite naturally formed a large part of roden's conversation. mrs. vansittart encouraged him with a singular persistency to talk of this interesting product.
“it is wonderful,” she said—“quite wonderful.”
“well, hardly that,” he answered slowly, as if there were something more to be said, which he did not say.
“and i do not give so much credit to herr von holzen as you suppose,” added mrs. vansittart, carelessly. “some day you will have to fulfil your promise of taking me over the works.”
roden did not answer. he was perhaps wondering when he had made the promise to which his companion referred.
“shall we go home that way?” asked mrs. vansittart, whose experience of the world had taught her that deliberate and steady daring in social matters usually, succeeds. “we might have a splendid gallop along the sands at low tide, and then ride up quietly through the dunes. i take a certain interest in—well—in your affairs, and you have never even allowed me to look at the outside of the malgamite works.”
“should like to know the extent of your interest,” muttered roden, with his awkward laugh.
“i dare say you would,” replied mrs. vansittart, coolly. “but that is not the question. here we are at the cross-roads. shall we go home by the sands and the dunes?”
“if you like,” answered roden, not too graciously.
according to his lights, he was honestly in love with mrs. vansittart, but percy roden's lights were not brilliant, and his love was not a very high form of that little-known passion. it lacked, for instance, unselfishness, and love that lacks unselfishness is, at its best, a sorry business. he was afraid of ridicule. his vanity would not allow him to risk a rebuff. his was that faintness of heart which is all too common, and owes its ignoble existence to a sullen vanity. he wanted to be sure that mrs. vansittart loved him before he betrayed more than a half-contemptuous admiration for her. who knows that he was not dimly aware of his own inferiority, and thus feared to venture?
the tide was low, as mrs. vansittart had foreseen, and they galloped along the hard, flat sands towards scheveningen, where a few clumsy fishing-boats lay stranded. far out at sea, others plied their trade, tacking to and fro over the banks, where the fish congregate. the sky was clear, and the deep-coloured sea flashed here and there beneath the sun. objects near and far stood out in the clear air with a startling distinctness. it was a fresh may morning, when it is good to be alive, and better to be young.
mrs. vansittart rode a few yards ahead of her companion, with a set face and deep calculating eyes. when they came within sight of the tall chimney of the pumping-station, it was she who led the way across the dunes. “now,” she suddenly inquired, pulling up, and turning in her saddle, “where are your works? it seems that one can never discover them.”
roden passed her and took the lead. “i will take you there, since you are so anxious to go—if you will tell me why you wish to see the works,” he said.
“i should like to know,” she answered, with averted eyes and a slow deliberation, “where and how you spend so much of your time.”
“i believe you are jealous of the malgamite works,” he said, with his curt laugh.
“perhaps i am,” she admitted, without meeting his glance; and roden rode ahead, with a gleam of satisfaction in his heavy eyes.
so mrs. vansittart found herself within the gates of the malgamite works, riding quietly on the silent sand, at the heels of roden's horse.
the workmen's dinner-bell had rung as they approached, and now the factories were deserted, while within the cottages the midday meal occupied the full attention of the voluntary exiles. for the directors had found it necessary, in the interests of all concerned, to bind the workers by solemn contract never to leave the precincts of the works without permission.
roden did not speak, but led the way across an open space now filled with carts, which were to be loaded during the day in readiness for an early despatch on the following morning. mrs. vansittart followed without asking questions. she was prepared to content herself with a very cursory visit.
they had not progressed thirty yards from the entrance gate, which roden had opened with a key attached to his watch-chain, when the door of one of the cottages moved, and von holzen appeared. he was hatless, and came out into the sunshine rather hurriedly.
“ah, madame,” he said, “you honour us beyond our merits.” and he stood, smiling gravely, in front of mrs. vansittart's horse.
she surreptitiously touched the animal with her heel, but von holzen checked its movement by laying his hand on the bridle.
“alas!” he said, “it happens to be our mixing day, and the factories are hermetically closed while the process goes forward. any other day, madame, that your fancy brings you over the dunes, i should be delighted—but not to-day. i tell you frankly there is danger. you surely would not run into it.” he looked up at her with his searching gaze.
“ah! you think it is easy to frighten me, herr von holzen,” she cried, with a little laugh.
“no; but i would not for the world that you should unwittingly run any risks in this place.”
as he spoke, he led the horse quietly to the gate, and mrs. vansittart, seeing her helplessness, submitted with a good grace.
roden made no comment, and followed, not ill pleased, perhaps, at this simple solution of his difficulty.
von holzen did not refer to the incident until late in the evening, when roden was leaving the works.
“this is too serious a time,” he said, “to let women, or vanity, interfere in our plans. you know that the deaths are on the increase. anything in the nature of an inquiry at this time would mean ruin, and—perhaps worse. be careful of that woman. i sometimes think that she is fooling you.—but i think,” he added to himself, when the gate was closed behind roden, “that i can fool her.”
